Any Approaching Enemy: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars

by Jay Worrall

  Penny brought up the subject of Charles’s estates in Cheshire. “If thou art not occupied at present, I wish to discuss my proposals for thy lands,” she said.

  It had been Charles’s hope to avoid this conversation entirely, or at least to put it off for as long as possible. He had decided it would be preferable to have his brother tell her she couldn’t have her school or mill rather than having to do it himself. He managed to look regretful. “I am sorry,” he said. “I would willingly do so, but since I am standing as officer of the watch, I cannot leave the quarterdeck. We’ll have to discuss it another time.”

  “But thou art not doing anything,” she said. “No one even speaks to thee.”

  “All the same,” he answered, “the watch officer must be instantly available in the event there is an emergency. There’s no hurry, we’ll attend to it when I can give you my undivided attention.”

  As the morning wore on, Penny fell increasingly silent and seemed content to stand idly beside him at the rail. At about six bells, he noticed the lone figure of Lieutenant Talmage by the forecastle at the far end of the ship, watching the work on Bevan’s brig. Charles frowned. The lieutenant’s fit of pique had become more than an aggravation. He knew that he could go forward, confront Talmage, and make amends, but he was damned if he would. It had been Talmage’s own inabilities and touchiness that had created the problem. Talmage could come and speak to him if he wanted to repair it. Charles was quite certain that he did not want the lieutenant back as his first.

  “Is that thy absent assistant?” Penny asked, following his eyes.

  “Lieutenant the Honorable Jacob Talmage,” he said, “taking his leisure upon the deck.”

  Penny stared in Talmage’s direction. “He seems very isolated,” she said at length.

  Charles did not answer but guessed what she was going to say next.

  “Would it be agreeable if I spoke with him?”

  He expelled his breath slowly. “I don’t think it will help. It has become an affair of honor. He apprehends that I insulted him.”

  “Didst thou?”

  “In a way, yes. But for cause.”

  “I will converse with him,” she said.

  Before he could decide whether he approved of this or not, she had gone down into the waist and was walking along the deck. What harm could it do? He watched as Penny moved between the cannon tethered against the bulwarks and the passing sailors who stopped to acknowledge her with a half-bow or a touch of the forehead. She responded to their greetings with a nod. He thought she looked frail, almost dainty, among the hulking weapons and rough men, two things that he knew her not to be. Even when she was aboard his own ship, he realized, he could look on her from a distance with an ache in his heart.

  As she approached, Talmage turned and quickly removed his hat. Charles saw his mouth move but could not hear the words. Penny’s bonnet bobbed as she stood with her hands clasped in front of her. Charles did not want to appear to be overly curious about the meeting, so he moved to the rail as if to observe the work on the brig, casting surreptitious glances in their direction. He noticed as the conversation progressed that Talmage increasingly did more of the talking, perhaps all of the talking, once gesturing with his fist. Charles had no sense that the lieutenant was threatening her, or he would have gone forward himself, but clearly, Talmage was venting his anger. Penny nodded regularly in response. After a time, Talmage’s volubility seemed to slow, though one hand rested on the hilt of his sword. Charles watched as Penny spoke for a few moments, her hands moving in front of her. Then she turned and started back, a look of concern fixed on her face.

  Charles met her at the head of the ladderway. “How did you get along?” he asked.

  “Well enough,” Penny answered, not meeting his eyes. “What thou said is true. He is angry with thee, and others.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Some of it is in confidence,” Penny said slowly, “but mostly about his disappointments. He feels that he has been treated unfairly.”

  “By me.”

  “By thee, but also by Stephen Winchester.” A worried look came into her eyes. “I have heard that men sometimes fight with swords and pistols for these reasons.”

  “Yes, but not in the navy, at least not often. In any event, I would not give him the satisfaction,” Charles said. “Why is he unhappy with Stephen?” As soon as he asked the question, he knew the answer.

  “His reasons are not always direct,” she said. “He is affronted that Stephen Winchester willingly replaced him. I think he knows that he cannot easily touch thee and has diverted his anger elsewhere. I fear that Stephen would rise to a challenge if Jacob Talmage tried him.” She paused, in distress. “Stephen is my brother, in the law and in my heart. This must not occur.”

  “I won’t permit it,” Charles said, and put his hand on her arm. “I promise you, I will not permit any such thing to occur.”

  She looked up at him seriously. “And what would thou do were he to insult me?”

  “Has he?” Charles said. He removed his hand and stood in front of her, his jaw fixed.

  Penny took both his hands and held them in her own. “He has not, I assure you. But if he felt that such an artifice would succeed, he might employ it.” She squeezed his hands firmly. “Thou must promise thou wouldst not rise.”

  Charles said nothing. He didn’t know what he would do if Talmage tried to hurt her, even with words.

  “Thou must promise,” Penny insisted. “Thou must armor thy heart with resolve against this. I could not live with myself if my husband did violence because of me.”

  “All right,” he said at last, although he found himself angered at the thought of it. The situation was intolerable. He sincerely hoped that they found Nelson and his squadron quickly. The sooner he was clear of Talmage, the better.

  By late afternoon, the work on Pylades was rapidly nearing completion. The mast was up in all its sections, the yards crossed and the sails bent on. A few ship’s boats continued to ply back and forth, but mostly to return Louisa’s crew and equipment.

  Charles thought to invite Bevan on board for supper, but considering the awkward relationship between his friend and Molly, he decided it would be better to go over himself, if only to discuss what they were going to do next. Before he could act, he noticed Pylades’s cutter pulling across with Bevan in the stern sheets. Charles went down to the entryport to meet him.

  “All’s well?” Charles said as Bevan climbed aboard.

  “Good as she’ll ever be, Charlie,” Bevan answered. “I want to say my thanks for your help.”

  “You’re ready to sail?”

  “In an hour, to be safe.”

  Charles scratched his chin in contemplation. “I make it we’re a full week behind Nelson’s squadron,” he said. “All I know is that he’s sailed by way of Messina. We’ll do the same and see what we can learn. If there’s no news, we might look into Malta. We know the French are there; maybe Nelson is, too. Beyond that I don’t know, but we’ll think of something. Give me a signal when you’re ready.”

  Bevan nodded, then hesitated. “Do you think I might have a word with Miss Bridges?”

  “So it’s Miss Bridges now, is it?” Charles said. “I believe you’ll find her on the quarterdeck with her sketches. You know the way.”

  Charles stayed behind while Bevan went up onto the deck and knelt beside Molly’s chair. He began talking in low tones. The girl kept her head bowed and her eyes averted. After a few moments, Bevan touched her hand and she nodded in response, looking up at him for the first time. Bevan then rose and started back toward the entryport and his boat.

  “How did it go?” Charles asked, intensely curious.

  Bevan started over the side toward the cutter. “Well enough,” he answered, and descended.

  Within the half hour, Pylades’s signal flags carried upward from her new mizzen halyards: She was prepared to make sail.

  “We will weigh anchor, Stephe
n,” Charles said. To Beechum, at his place by the flag locker: “Signal Course south-by-southeast, take position to leeward, if you please.” He welcomed the regular movement of the deck beneath his feet as Louisa loosed her sails and glided over the easy seas, going large with a moderate westerly wind.

  “THERE, LOOK AT that,” Charles said, pointing over the bow quarter to the rugged lump of island on the horizon.

  “What is it?” Penny asked, her hand raised to shield her eyes from the morning sun reflecting off the ripples of the sea. Since the evening before, after rounding Cape Passero on the southeastern tip of Sicily, Louisa, with Pylades following to leeward, had been beating on the larboard tack against a stiff westerly wind, making toward the southwest and the island in the distance.

  “Malta,” Charles said, “the home of the ancient Order of the Knights Hospitalers of Saint John of Jerusalem. They go all the way back to the Crusades.”

  “Is it that old?”

  “The Order is,” Charles said. “They were in Palestine or Syria or somewhere in the Levant at first, I think. They came here only two or three hundred years ago and built their capital at Valletta. I called there once, four years back, on the old Argonaut. It’s fantastic, you’ll see.”

  “How long will it be until we come to the harbor?”

  “Maybe three hours. It’s not so far, but the wind’s foul.”

  Louisa and Pylades had passed through the Strait of Messina— between the fabled Rock of Scylla and the Whirlpool of Charybdis— early on the second morning, after Pylades’s repairs. Pilots came aboard both ships to oversee the transit. From them Charles learned only that a large British squadron had made the passage a week before and sailed toward Syracuse or Cape Passero. Beyond that, no one knew. It was a large sea. Nor was there any word of the French fleet, although everyone had heard that Malta had fallen.

  Penny and Molly had come on deck to wonder at the sight of Mount Etna, bathed in the early light and spewing smoke high into the sky. Molly, of course, made a sketch of it.

  With Malta slowly growing larger in the distance, Charles ordered the hands to dinner and sat down with Molly and Penny in his cabin to eat. Afterward, he went on deck and sent Midshipman Sykes into the rigging to inquire of the lookout in the crosstrees whether he saw any sign of British warships off the island.

  “Naught, sir,” Sykes reported some minutes later. “He says he can see the outer roads and beyond, but no sign of the squadron. No Frenchies, either.”

  Charles swore under his breath. “Thank you,” he said to Sykes.

  Where the hell was Nelson? With the prevailing wind from the west, it was unlikely that the French and their huge convoy of unruly transports had sailed in that direction. There were no reports that Sicily itself had been invaded; he certainly would have heard. So it must be somewhere in the east: the Peloponnesos, the Sublime Porte, the Levant, Crete, Egypt, even the Crimea, to attack Russia. It was a lengthy and widely scattered list. As long as he was at Malta, however, it would be useful to look into Valletta, so he could report on the strength of the French naval forces there.

  “Mr. Eliot,” he said to the master, “we will stand on to have a gander into the harbor. Heave to about a mile and a half out.”

  “Aye-aye.”

  “Stephen, clear the ship for action, if you please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Beechum.”

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Signal to Pylades, Keep station to starboard.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  The green spot in the distance resolved into hills and headlands and bays, with the entrance to the several ports of Valletta clearly distinguishable. Penny and Molly soon arrived on the quarterdeck.

  “Thy crew hast taken our chamber away,” Penny said, clearly frustrated. “Even our bed is removed. There is nothing remaining.”

  “It will be put back just as it was,” Charles said. “It’s only a precaution.”

  “A precaution against what?”

  “In case we are set upon,” he said carefully. “We are a British warship in French waters. It’s possible they will be offended.”

  “Art thou planning to shoot thy cannon at them?”

  “No, no,” Charles said reassuringly. “We are only going to look into the port.”

  “Then why should they take offense?”

  Charles thought her concern touchingly naïve. But it reminded him that he needed to consider what he would do if an enemy did attack them. He had thought about it before, but with little urgency, as the threat seemed remote. He wasn’t cruising in the normal way, looking for a fight or even prizes. His duty was to find Nelson; that was all. Having the women on board made it more complicated. It would be natural for him to be cautious. He would have to put his mind to it one day soon.

  “Oh, they won’t, in all likelihood,” he said airily, as if to belay all doubts. “It’s just a precaution.” If a French warship did exit the harbor, they would see it in plenty of time to make their escape.

  Louisa angled across the sea, closing on the port entrance. At about two miles, he could see the battlements on Point Saint Elmo, the seaward defenses for the city of Valletta. To the left lay the entrance to the Great Port, protected on the far side by a fort on Point Sollile. The land fell away from there for five or six miles to Cape Sega, where the coast angled sharply southward. To the right was the entrance to the other main harbor at Port Marsanmciet and its forts at Point Dragut and on Lazaret Island. Beyond stood a bluff headland sheltering Saint Julien Bay on the far side.

  Louisa hove to across the wind, her courses taken in, and the mizzen topsail braced around and laid against the mast. She came to a rest a mile and a half from the Saint Elmo fort.

  “Mr. Beechum,” Charles said, “if you would be so kind as to climb to the tops with your glass and report to me what you see in the harbors.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beechum said, touching his hat extra smartly in Penny’s presence.

  Charles took up his own telescope and led Penny to the rail. “Look there,” he said, opening the long glass for her and helping to steady it. With his naked eye, he could clearly see the miles of towering stone battlements and the high-walled city behind. He saw that the three main forts all had the tricolor flag of the French Republic streaming from their towers.

  “So many cannons,” Penny said in wonderment, one eye screwed comically shut, with the lens pressed tight against the other. “Why do they require such grand defenses?”

  “I think it was as a defense against the Turks, or someone,” Charles said, unsure of his history. “They don’t seem to have helped much against the French, though.”

  “Captain Edgemont, sir!” Beechum’s voice came urgently down from the masthead. “There’s a ship rounding the point awindward. She’s French, sir.”

  Charles twisted around and immediately saw three masts, fully dressed in canvas, just behind the end of the point, and then the bowsprit showing clear. He judged it to be not over two miles distant.

  “Mr. Eliot,” he said, “put her before the wind, if you please. All plain sail. Set a course to round Cape Sega.”

  Eliot nodded and turned to instruct the quartermaster at the wheel.

  “Stephen, beat to quarters.”

  Beechum arrived nearly breathless on the quarterdeck. “She’s a frigate, sir. Thirty-six guns. I’m sure she’s seen us.”

  “I’m sure she has, Mr. Beechum,” Charles said. “Did you see anything of the harbor?”

  “Yes, sir. Two corvettes, sixteen or eighteen guns, and a number of supply ships. Didn’t have time to count.”

  “The corvettes, were they preparing to make sail?”

  “Not that I noticed, sir,” Beechum said doubtfully.

  “Thank you, Mr. Beechum,” Charles said. “If you would resume your duties with the forecastle guns.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Beechum’s last words were almost drowned out by the marine drummer who had hurried t
o his position on the forward part of the quarterdeck and loudly begun his roll.

  The frigate’s bow showed clear of the point almost to her midships, Charles noted, and she was turning in his direction, her masts coming into a line.

  “Ain’t Daniel’s sails all blowed out,” he heard Molly say. “Why is that?”

  Louisa’s sails had been braced around. Her head was just beginning to fall off to leeward. Charles looked for Pylades and found that she was already around, but spilling her wind to cover his stern. “I’ll have none of that,” he muttered under his breath. “Mr. Sykes,” he called to the midshipman standing nearby.

  “Sir?” Sykes answered.

  “You will have to manage the signals,” he said. “Run up Set all possible sail and Maintain station. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said. “To Pylades, sir?”

  “Pylades is the only ship we can signal to, Mr. Sykes.”

  “Of course, sir,” Sykes said, his face reddening, and disappeared.

  Charles looked back at the French frigate with all plain sails set to her royals, not a mile and a half astern and closing rapidly. Louisa was almost around, her sails slatting and beginning to fill. Charles knew he’d been careless, badly careless. He should have positioned Pylades farther out so she could have seen anything approaching from the other side of the point. He’d put everybody’s lives in danger.

  He glanced at Penny, who still stood beside him. She met his eyes. “What art thou doing?” she said.

  “We are running,” Charles said. “We’ve overstayed our welcome and have to leave.”

  The courses were dropped and clewed down. They filled with loud snapping sounds. He felt the ship gain way under his feet. “Mr. Eliot, we will hoist the royals.”

  Charles looked again at Penny. Her eyes never left his face, her lips compressed into a bloodless line. She must be frightened near to death, he thought, with her pacifist views. “You must go below, my love,” he said in a reassuring tone. “You’ll be safe there.”